Wisconsin’s own Mitchell Michiels (Best Advantage CU) and Danielle Frawley (Fort Community CU) – along with 17 other CU young professionals – were selected from a national pool of applicants to Crash the CUNA Government Affairs Conference in DC in February. The Crash experience included nearly a week’s worth of education, networking and project work that focused on helping credit unions to better serve the needs of small businesses and cooperatives.

Danielle was kind enough to share some thoughts about her experience:

“We stayed in a hostel. We were on the sixth floor and I could have carried on a conversation with someone on the sidewalk without opening the paper thin window. We woke up early to ensure that there was still hot water left in the community shower room. However, even without all of the comforts of home, I was happy that I was staying in a dorm-style room with five of the other “crasher” ladies.

At night we could come back and talk about our projects, share ideas to take back to our own credit unions and form a bond around the craziness of what we were taking part of. You might be wondering what I’m referring to with projects. As part of the crasher group, we were challenged by Brent Dixon and Theresa Hilinski to come up with ideas of ways that credit unions could help small businesses. While everyone else was enjoying their breakfasts, lunches and breaks, we were sitting in Salon F at the Washington Convention Center, learning about design thinking, brainstorming, applying our ideas, breaking them down, and rebuilding them.

In between our project work, we had the opportunity to have different “mentor sessions” with much admired credit union professionals including Bill Cheney. While everyone else saw him speak in a room of 4,200 people, we were in a room of about 20.

Needless to say, it was an incredible experience. However, the most prominent memory I will have from this experience is how often I heard my fellow crashers say things like “Wow-Wisconsin is where it’s at!” or “Everything awesome about credit unions comes from Wisconsin!”. All of this being said while Pat Wesenberg was appointed CUNA Chair and Paul Kundert was appointed Filene Chair. I’ve never felt more proud to be a credit union professional from the cheese-head state.”

CUNA Mutual Group was also on-site and provided some video coverage featuring interviews from Mitch, Danielle and several other Crashers:

Last week I posted a You Tube video about leadership lessons that we can learn from the “dancing guy” on the YP Facebook page. Here is the transcript of the narration of the video:

If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!

As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made! Let’s recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

This video was a very amusing way to show how leadership can work. I found the end message to “courageously follow and show others how to follow” refreshing. Sometimes the best thing we can do as leaders is follow other leaders and support them.

So when you see someone trying to do something great, think about the dancing man. Do you have the guts to be the first person to join in to create something great?

It’s that time of year again and we’re gearing up for our Wisconsin Credit Union League Annual Convention, May 8-11 at the Kalahari Resort in Wisconsin Dells! To sum it up, it’s going to be 4 days of incredible speakers, great networking opportunities and plenty of entertainment (oh, and water slides, if you’re into that sort of thing). Check out full event details here.

For young professionals, Convention can be a very beneficial and rewarding experience to take part in and we at the League do everything we can to make sure it’s easy and affordable for you to attend. Over the past three years, we’ve been able to increase our young professional attendance at Convention by double and we want to keep that bar high!

So we have two ways to help young professionals make it to the Dells in May:

Crash events are designed to reward deserving young CU staff with a chance to experience an event they normally wouldn’t be able to take part in. Read more about 2012 League Annual Convention’s Crash here. This year, 12 YPs will have the opportunity to attend Annual Convention at minimum cost to their CU (registration, hotel and most meals are covered, thanks to our generous sponsors). This will be the third year The Wisconsin League has hosted a Crash event and as in years past, this year’s group of Crashers will gain the full experience of attending Convention and also participate in group activities that include small group discussions with some of Convention’s biggest names.

To Crash, YPs under the age of 35 will need to:
1. Obtain manager’s approval to attend Convention.
2. Be a registered member of the YP Network.
3. Submit an application by March 26. Applications will be reviewed anonymously by peer leaders and all applicants will be notified no later than April 3.

OR……

2)Discounted Registration for Young Professionals

All YPs will have the chance to attend the Annual Convention at the discounted rate of $99. In addition to the basic Convention schedule, they will also be invited to attend the following:

Special networking event just for YPs.

Breakout session specifically for YPs.

Meet and Greet event with the YP Network Advisory Board.

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If you have questions about any of these items, you can respond on this post or give me shout at chleminak@theleague.coop.

Ahhhh… Facebook. Facebook and I have a love/hate relationship. While I love going on Facebook and seeing what others are up too, I hate that it takes so much of my time (by choice of course). However, I choose to go on Facebook because I find value in it. I can often find deals from a store, what my local credit union is up too, and interesting news articles.

I found it interesting one of the reasons Facebook can decrease productivity is “It’s depressing, and depressed people are less productive.” It basically states that people get jealous of others accomplishments, photos and comments that are posted. I read a similar article last year that you can find here.